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Justin Trudeau - Timelines

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whiskey601 said:
They can't even get their act together enough to replace the army's fleet of trucks," he said. "How tough can it be to buy a fleet of trucks?"
Gee, I dunno, Andy. You spent four years as CLS trying to buy them: why don't you just tell us yourself?
 
whiskey601 said:

Leslie said the prime minister has also allowed the size of the core of the army to drop to one-third less than what it was three or four years ago and “choked off recruiting” for the reserve force.
"Mr. Harper's track record for defence since the end of the Afghan war has been abysmal," he said ....

Nothing like a nice little war to boost recruiting.....
 
whiskey601 said:
Mr. Harper's track record for defence since the end of the Afghan war has been abysmal," he said ....

No worse than those guys who were running things before then, nein? Who were they again? What do we call that period?

Will those guys swear on their mothers' graves to do better next time?

Didn't think so.
 
"They can't even get their act together enough to replace the army's fleet of trucks," he said. "How tough can it be to buy a fleet of trucks?"

Is that a governmental shortcoming or a departmental shortcoming?  If the Conservative party in government is responsible, by all means hang them; but if this (and, for example, the VA kerfuffle) results from the underperformance of people in uniforms and/or civil service suits, let's address the problems where they truly lie.
 
hamiltongs said:
Gee, I dunno, Andy. You spent four years as CLS trying to buy them: why don't you just tell us yourself?
Didn't want to rock the boat when he thought he had a chance of being CDS? There is no doubt government procurement is broken but was it the liberals fault it took 12 years to get a backpack through the system? A freaking rucksack that we could have gotten cheaper and faster by showing up at the north face or Patagonia, and saying I need 20,000 of that model in Cadpat .  What kind of volume deal will you give us?  The only party who is blameless is the NDP and that is only because they haven't had a chance email to screw up.
 
http://epaper.nationalpost.com/epaper/viewer.aspx?noredirect=true
   
John Ivison - National Post - 14 Feb 15

Liberals change course on ISIS mission


Public support for combat damages Trudeau’s reputation

The Liberal party’s position on the war against ISIS in Iraq is beginning to look like an egregious case of mission creep.

As polls continue to suggest that three out of four Canadians support the use of force to stop the Islamic State — including a similar percentage in Quebec, where support for combat missions has historically been lower — the Liberals are shifting their stance in subtle fashion.

Marc Garneau, the Liberal foreign affairs critic, took to the airwaves Thursday with a much softer line of opposition to the mission his party voted against last October.

He said the Liberals backed sending 69 special forces soldiers to Iraq and were supportive of the idea of training and advising the Kurdish peshmerga.

“The part we had a problem with was the involvement of the CF-18s, and the reason for that was we had nine other countries providing strike aircraft. It was overkill,” he said on CBC TV’s Power and Politics. “There were better ways to use Canadian military resources.”

What is needed is to train Peshmerga fighters more quickly, he said. When pressed on how this should be done without involving Canadian forces in front-line fire-fights, he suggested they could be trained in Canada at CFB Gagetown or CFB Shilo.

Quite apart from the far-fetched nature of transporting Kurdish militia to bases in New Brunswick or Manitoba, this is a dramatic evolution of Liberal policy from that espoused by leader Justin Trudeau in a recent interview. He said he has been “unequivocal” that Canada should concentrate on such measures as humanitarian aid, refugee support and medical aid.

The current mandate for the mission in Iraq runs out in early April and the Liberals, sensing they are on the wrong side of public opinion, appear to be gearing down in preparation for a screeching U-turn.

The Liberal thinking was that this fight bore all the hallmarks of a classic quagmire — where Western countries are drawn into battle by increments until too much blood and treasure had been expended to easily back out.
 
So, is this Marc Garneau going renegade on his leader's policy? Unlikely.

So as I understand it the Liberals have been successfully maneuvered by the Tories and the NDP into admitting that they have no real foreign/defence policy -- if elected they will bomb people based mostly on opinion polls.

You've got to hand it to the Tories and the NDP -- at least they have some principles and policies. Or at least are better at pretending they do.
 
Both the Tories and NDP are "Transformative" political parties. Every policy and platform plank can (in theory) be traced back to their philosophical roots, and potentially can be defended as being true "Tory" or NDP policy flowing from these roots. They cynical among us can suggest that their policies and process are more in the breach than representing any Transformational values (and of course any real political party needs to be somewhat transactional to get things done), but the thread is there, regardless of how tenuous it may be.

The Liberals have been a "Transactional" party for a very long time (possibly as far back as the 1960's), essentially buying support from various interest groups, which explains the incoherent mishmash of policies over the years. The clearest evidence has during the last Liberal Leadership race, where Marc Garneau presented a platform which would have been right at home with Jack Layton, while Martha Hall-Findley's policy proposals would have been right at home with the CPC. Since there was nothing particularly "Liberal" about them, the party went for the blank slate of no policy at all....

The Young Dauphin will need to avoid any serious policy debates during the election campaign (or for that matter, avoid any serious or semi serious journalists as well), which should be entertaining to watch as he ducks, slides and equivocates his way through the campaign....
 
Thucydides:
The Young Dauphin will need to avoid any serious policy debates during the election campaign (or for that matter, avoid any serious or semi serious journalists as well), which should be entertaining to watch as he ducks, slides and equivocates his way through the campaign....

If, a big if, his ineptitude is reported fairly and not as an edited sound bite on the back page, or at the end of a hit job on the CPC.

 
Rifleman62 said:
Thucydides:
If, a big if, his ineptitude is reported fairly and not as an edited sound bite on the back page, or at the end of a hit job on the CPC.

True, but the Blogosphere is becoming a bigger and bigger slice of the information environment, and it becomes harder to hide things when they are going viral on YouTube or social media platforms. While the legacy media may hate this, it is the new environment, and CBC news with a royal 7% of the viewing audience isn't in a position to compete (it will be interesting to add up the totals of Legacy media vs New Media and look at the changes over time).
 
Thucydides said:
True, but the Blogosphere is becoming a bigger and bigger slice of the information environment, and it becomes harder to hide things when they are going viral on YouTube or social media platforms. While the legacy media may hate this, it is the new environment, and CBC news with a royal 7% of the viewing audience isn't in a position to compete (it will be interesting to add up the totals of Legacy media vs New Media and look at the changes over time).
.........and the loss of Sun News, no matter anyone's thoughts on them, has effectively put a damper on anything other that a left handed slant on the whole political realm. The CPC is fending (quite well, I think) on there own, with no help. Meanwhile the Libs have the whole weight of the MSM behind them with no dissenting voices. They trump up his faux pas, hair and lack of policies as the epitome of the type of leader Canada should have.

Just like McWynnety, shame on us as a society if the young dauphin gets elected PM
 
From the Toronto Star no less:

http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2015/02/19/liberal-leader-justin-trudeau-is-running-out-of-second-chances-goar.html#

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is running out of second chances: Goar


Canadians have shrugged off Justin Trudeau’s slips and stumbles for three years but they want a competent national leader now.

By: Carol Goar Star Columnist, Published on Thu Feb 19 2015


Eight months from today, Canadians will wake up to a new — or re-elected — government.

This would be a fine time for Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to start demonstrating the maturity, self-discipline and competence to lead the nation.

His political record to date has been marred by misjudgments, ill-considered remarks and discarded promises. He has put forward few substantive policies to counteract these eyebrow-raising moves. His admirers are getting nervous; his detractors are rubbing their hands.

Trudeau is not a callow youth He is a 43-year-old father with seven years of parliamentary experience.

Nor is he a political naïf. He knows how to use his charm and good looks to attract followers. He understands that Canadians are hungry for hope. He speaks with passion about restoring a robust middle class, cleaning up Canada’s sorry environmental record, upholding human rights around the world and winning back global respect. He has brought the Liberal party back from the brink of extinction, filled its coffers and increased its membership fivefold in less than two years.

But he keeps triggering alarm bells. His eager embrace of Tory turncoat Eve Adams last week left grassroots Liberals shaking their heads in bewilderment and Conservative organizers chuckling. The Mississauga MP, known chiefly for her sharp elbows and her disregard for party rules, was a dubious prize. The Tories were relieved to get rid of her.

Apparently Trudeau and his aides thought they’d scored a brilliant coup: Dimitri Soudas, Adams’s fiancé, was executive director of the Conservative party until March of last year. He might be willing to spill Stephen Harper’s secrets.

If the prime minister is worried, he’s hiding it well. If political analysts are impressed, they’re holding their praise. At this point, no one discounts Trudeau’s chances of toppling a chilly, divisive Conservative prime minister. He represents both generational change and — as the son of Canada’s 15th prime minister — the values many Canadians cherish. But questions about his fitness to govern keep popping up. To review the record:

Four months into his leadership campaign, he was found to be charging hefty speaking fees to non-profit organizations. He hastily offered to give the money back to any group that asked. “I’m proud of the work I did as a professional public speaker. But I also realize that Canadians expect more from me and I am glad to use what I can, to do what I can, to deal with these organizations,” he said, shrugging off the ethical lapse.

In November 2013, the Liberal leader mused at a women’s event: “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China. Their basic dictatorship is actually allowing them to turn their economy around on a dime.” Asian Canadians, many of whom had fled repression in China, cringed and human rights activists urged him to apologize.

In January 2014 he expelled all 32 senators from the Liberal caucus, without warning or consultation. Even those who share Trudeau’s goal — to “end partisanship and patronage in the Senate” — were taken aback by the way he treated seasoned Liberals who had worked for the party in good times and bad. “There were some good organizers who won’t be active anymore but we’re getting in so many more that it’s not something I think about too much,” he told the Star’s Susan Delacourt nonchalantly.

A month later, he made light of Russia’s incursion into Ukraine. “Since Russia lost in (Olympic) hockey, they will be a bad mood and we fear Russian involvement in Ukraine.”

In April, he tossed aside his pledge to allow “open nominations for all Liberal candidates in every single riding in the next election,” blocking a bid by Christine Innes to seek the nomination in Trinity-Spadina. He claimed her workers were bullying volunteers. It subsequently emerged there was a favoured candidate. Now all would-be contenders need the approval of the party’s “green light committee” to run under the Liberal banner.

In May, he took away the long-standing right of Liberal MPs to vote according to their consciences on wrenching moral issues. Under his leadership, he declared, members of the Liberal caucus would be required to vote pro-choice on abortion, forcing several to choose between their personal/religious convictions and their political allegiance.

Then came the Eve Adams episode.

Initially Canadians were willing to give Trudeau a second — and a third and a seventh — chance. But now they’re starting to weigh their electoral choices. The Liberal leader needs a solid platform, a dependable moral compass and someone in his inner circle who can persuade him to pause and think.

Carol Goar’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
 
Watching the news today, it seems the Young Dauphin is willing to "whip out" an extension to Canada's military mission in Syria.

If they ever get in power, look for more poll following military missions abroad, as the Liberals "whip out" the CAF whenever it might be briefly popular. The effects on the actual members and our operational capabilities be damned; only the polls will drive our deployments under the Young Dauphin.
 
Thucydides said:
Watching the news today, it seems the Young Dauphin is willing to "whip out" an extension to Canada's military mission in Syria.

If they ever get in power, look for more poll following military missions abroad, as the Liberals "whip out" the CAF whenever it might be briefly popular. The effects on the actual members and our operational capabilities be damned; only the polls will drive our deployments under the Young Dauphin.

Unfortunately, this is what I fear.
 
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